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https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/1306/

Growing Up in Japan

There was one boy that was of a mixed marriage and we kind of hung around together for a while. I remember he found a dead rattlesnake and I took the rattlesnake and I put it in the women’s bathroom, coiled it up. Oh boy, that was my revenge. Nobody ever found out who did it. But it was rough because I didn’t know the Japanese, except the servants, and all of a sudden I’m the low person on the totem pole. I spoke fluent Japanese so I understood everything. My mother had a really rough time in camp because she was used to servants and even when we came over, she didn’t know how to cook or anything. So I would learn to cook something and then I would teach my mother and I was about 8, 9, 10, I would do that and then grandmother would also help a little bit.


families hapa intermarriage interracial marriages Japan marriages mixed marriages racially mixed people schools

Date: August 27, 2012

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Cindy Nakashima, Emily Anderson

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum with support of NITTO Tires Life History Project. Courtesy of the USC Hapa Japan Database Project.

Interviewee Bio

Terry Janzen was born in Tokyo, Japan on July 15, 1930. She is half Japanese and grew up in both Japan and the United States. She was incarcerated at Poston for 6 months during World War II. She has been a teacher and a Chair for the Adams County Democratic Party in Washington. (April 2013)

 

* Terry Janzen interviewed by Cindy Nakashima and Emily Anderson for the exhibition, Visible & Invisible: A Hapa Japanese American History. A Collaboration with the USC Hapa Japan Database Project, videographer, Evan Kodani with support of NITTO Tires Life History Project.

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The reason for coming to Japan

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Tracing my family crest

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Toshio Inahara
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Family background

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Driving 1930 Ford at age 12

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Kip Fulbeck
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Early consciousness of identity

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Kip Fulbeck
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Finding parallels through art

(b. 1965) filmmaker and artist

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Refusing to use a Chinese name to identify as Asian American

(b. 1965) filmmaker and artist

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The Hapa Project

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Perceptions of uniqueness

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Defusing myths through The Hapa Project

(b. 1965) filmmaker and artist

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Difficulty responding to the question "What are you?"

(b. 1965) filmmaker and artist

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Kip Fulbeck
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Differing responses by gender to the Hapa Project

(b. 1965) filmmaker and artist

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Kip Fulbeck
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Japanese Americans are more aware of their Hapa identity

(b. 1965) filmmaker and artist

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Hapa as his primary identity

(b. 1965) filmmaker and artist

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International dimensions of hapa identity

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